Saturday, February 9, 2013

Dear Mr. Nandi, now prove what you said or back off....

It seems its a season of making controversial statements, offering unsolicited advice (specially to females on what they should or shouldn't do) in India, in the middle of all other events like fatwas, protests, noted author Mr. Ashis Nandi made a very strange statement at the Jaipur Literature Festival, he suggested that the ranks of the corrupt in India were made up
entirely of those from the Other Backward Classes, the Scheduled Castes
and the Schedule Tribes, as expected this statement generated array of reactions from different sections of society some supporting Mr. Nandy and many ridiculing his statement, all these reactions are as expected but I want to point attention of readers to the statement which he made. I wonder what data and logic he used to come to this conclusion, it sounds very ridiculous and rather than protesting against it or trying to get him arrested for this people should prove him wrong and force him to take his statement back.

There is no question that Mr. Nandy have right to express his opinion and I am not in favor of arresting him or making his life difficult just for making this remark. Any statement like this get condemned in India, different sections of society register their reactions differently, but these things never get discussed properly, freely in open environment, I think we need to do this. Rather than threatening people, attacking movie theaters people should debate over the issues these people talk about, if they are wrong try to prove them wrong, make them to apologize and accept their mistake but not by force or threats but by logic and solid arguments.

Corruption is very rampant in all sections of public life in India, one can not generalize that people belonging to any particular caste or religion are more involved in corruption compared to others. Outlook magazine published one table (see reference 1) where they listed caste or religion of people involved in different corruption scandals which were reported in last decade or so and one can see that there is lot of variety there, people from all sections of society are part of this great crime. This chart itself in enough to prove Mr. Nandy wrong and if he is an sensible guy he will accept his mistake. There is nothing wrong in making mistakes, we all do it, we all mess it some things at some stage of our life, but after realizing that mistake not correcting it is another big mistake, I hope Mr. Nandy won't do this second mistake which will be worst than his first one.